3.1 was released just in time for the holidays, but I felt the new Acro Mode we have developed has not been adequately demonstrated. So I shot this video to show that Arducopter now has a competent Acro mode to go along with all the other functions. This is kind of a big deal to me, as I am interested in learning acrobatic flying, but I really appreciate having a system which can "bail out" if I lose control. Throughout this video I was flipping between Acro and Stabilize, with Arducopter generally doing a good job of saving the copter after I lost orientation.
This is also one of the few demonstrations of a new Pixhawk controller on something other than an Iris. But don't be fooled, Acro works just as well on an APM2.5. :)
While developing and testing this code, I have also done quite a bit of high speed acro flying, on both the quad and my helicopters, but it was simply too cold to bother hearing out to the flying field. So this video is just some basic flips in one place. I will try to get out for some better video in a few days. If it warms up. :)
Comments
Rob, you just about have it right. The only thing you got wrong is the yaw. When you push the yaw stick, it turns. When you release, it stops and holds, it does not keep turning.
So what is different with the Acro mode for 3.1 is the way it flies when you have Trainer mode turned off. With 3.01 and prior to that, leaving Trainer mode on resulted in an experience that is very similar to Stabilize. However, when you turned Trainer mode off, you had a simple rate mode. However, the rate control was REALLY bad. It was basically unflyable. Nearly impossible to control.
With 3.1, in pure rate mode (trainer off) it is much much more stable and predictable. It is pure rate control, but it tracks any errors and corrects them. It's very much like a flybarless controller for helicopters.
If you've never flown acro before, it's hard to understand the difference. But it's flies much much better. I've flown up to 20 m/s in Acro mode, doing flips and barrel rolls, something that you could never do with 3.0.1.
@Soren: The loss of altitude is largely due to the fact that these F450 frames are really horrible. Very flexible. And the white arms are softer than the red arms. Thus, when I punch the throttle, the copter darts off forward. It's pretty bad. So I have to take it easy. If I had 8" props on it, it would probably be more flyable, but this just isn't an acrobatic quad.
I have seen skilled pilots do those flips manually with less loss of altitude. Even did it myself.
I would love to have a rate-stabilization only mode with a panic switch to return to level. Maybe even return to home-look if the panic switch was pulled for longer time. More fun for the pilot.
Regards
Soren
Looks good, I'm looking forward to trying some of the new features in 3.1. Wrt to acro mode, I've tried it once before in 3.0.1 and it didn't seem much different to stabilise. But I was being very tentative and reading the wiki page I think I might have had trainer mode 2 on so auto level and limited lean angle.
Am I right in thinking that if I'm in acro with the trainer disabled and I push my roll stick forward then the copter will begin to role forward and _continue_ to roll forward until I release the stick? And if I don't release the stick then it will, in theory roll right round, upside down and come back to level (assuming it doesn't hit the ground first)?
And if I let it roll until it is angled 45 degrees forward and the release the stick back to the centre it will stay pitched forward at 45 degrees and it's up to me to pull back on the stick to make it roll back to level?
And similarly in other directions?
Is yaw the same? So if I set it off yawing left and centre the stick it will continue to yaw left until I give it some right yaw to stop it? So I could (in theory) have my sticks centred and the copter rotating on the spot? (Though I'm guess in practice this wouldn't really work because it would get push around by wind and I'd need to correct for that in other axes)
Merry Christmas Rob, thumps home that folks are all over the world I am sat in shorts here ;-)
Excellent! Love seeing the Pixhawk videos coming in. Merry Christmas and huge thanks for all your contributions this year -- one of the top dev team members!
Great! A nice addition to our acro wiki page as well.
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